Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: Killing Volume, in reply to John Russell,
Replace "dead trees" with "vinyl records" here, and this is exactly the sort of response I was speaking of earlier when I talked about niche markets.
Vinyl is the only format with growth in the music market these days. It may be a niche but it's an expanding one. Will it ever become dominant again? No, of course not, but I think vinyl may well survive the dying optical disc formats.
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Hard News: Killing Volume, in reply to John Russell,
Yeah, I would. I haven't bought a physical book since I got an iPad
I use both. I have ebooks for travel (trains/planes), but have over the last year reverted to tactile for home, and never leave the house without a physical book in my bag.
That said, I haven't bought a magazine for a year or more.
Volume, however, was free and I've always picked it up when I'm able.
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Hard News: Killing Volume, in reply to Russell Brown,
That said, it has been suggested to me that the execution of ad sales could have been smarter, and that the healthy-looking sales didn't deliver as much revenue as they should have.
I was told something similar in the past few days - about the number of ads given away/heavily discounted in order to get others in, but likewise:
But I don't know if that's correct.
If I had a record voucher for every worthy NZ music publication that's disappeared over the years.... the history is not good.
And I don't think it has anything much to do with collapsing industries - as Russell says the live industry is strong and they advertise. Mostly it's to do with the economics of running a niche publication in a tiny market.
How most magazines - aside from the pulp merchants - survive or have survived in NZ over the years is still beyond me. I have huge respect for those that do and I'd hoped that Volume would survive because it was a worthwhile addendum to a bigger brand - but that assumed APN had a broad vision and of that there seems to be little evidence these days.
When they let John Baker go recently it seemed that the end was nigh.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to nzlemming,
Brazil's copyright societies indicted for fraud, new law demands efficient, transparent collecting societies
I think ours are very conscientious these days and transparent in their structure and accounting, but I had reason to query a statement sent from the Hungarian office many years back. The record had gone to number 1 there and the airplay figure was just $10.
I questioned this and was told that most radio didn't report, and - anyway - the singles chart was based on physical sales there, not airplay as it was in much of the world.
The sales figure arrived - for $10. I again questioned it and was told by the record company that the singles chart was airplay based and there was no real market for physical issues.
I still have the plaque for the # 1 but that $20 was all we ever saw.
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I guess this is the place for this:
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Hard News: The war over a mystery, in reply to Islander,
If he'd added Ellis, I would so totally agree-
those cases stick out like gangrenous thumbs trying to hitchhike justice according to our law-I'd add Philip Sturm, another case that glared false conviction - essentially railroaded into a cell and bankruptcy because the police didn't like him. Guilty of being an pretty unpleasant person living a sleezy lifestyle - little else.
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Hard News: The war over a mystery, in reply to Stephen Judd,
I have trouble understanding how you can *know* something and yet not be able muster the evidence that substantiates it.
Let me throw another family anecdote into this: my grandfather, a judge, died in August 1973. I spent much of his last days with him, as did my mother and father. Shortly before he passed he told us that Thomas was innocent and the cops had planted evidence. It was, he said, common knowledge in the force.
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Hard News: Belief Media, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
FIGHT!
Hardly a fight, more like a drubbing. The poor old Cardinal is staggering around in the late 19th Century, with a smattering of anti-semitism and godwin-ism tossed in for good effect.
And in the UK the Archbishop of Canterbury has stated firmly that "the resurrection is a 'fact' ".
Ahh, ok...
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Hard News: Belief Media, in reply to 3410,
that census trends show quite the opposite.
The same slow drift is happening in the USA - the non-believer percentage for under 29s is around 22% and is heading towards 50% in large Western and Eastern seaboard cities.
And that, I think, is a huge upside of the noise created by Dawkins, Hitchens and others - it allowed a vast number of people who were sitting scratching their heads at the absurdity of a divine creator but unable or unwilling to kick against the mainstream faith to do exactly that. To come out.
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Capture: Better Food Photography, in reply to Islander,
Two freshly peeled lychees in the bottom of each glass adds to the deliciousness :)